Under the Indian Motor Vehicles Act 1914, an inspector in Andhra Pradesh must have well-brushed teeth, and will be disqualified if he has a pigeon chest, knock knees, flatfeet and hammer toes.

This is one among a tangle of bizarre, archaic laws, which survived for years.

Many of these rules put up obstacles to running smooth administration.

The Narendra Modi government had made it clear at its inception that it was time for these dinosaurs to go extinct.

A century-old one said the toll tax for boats ferrying passengers across the river Ganga cannot be more than two annas – a denomination not in use any more.

While successive governments could remove just 1,301 in 65 years . The present central government has managed to weed out as many as 1,200 Acts in just three years.

“The Modi government is determined to relegate several archaic Acts to history. Laws need to be consonant with the times. 1,200 redundant Acts have been scrapped. 1,824 more have been identified for repeal,” said law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

During the 2014 election campaign, Modi promised that if the BJP came to power, for every law passed, his government would repeal 10 obsolete ones.

Laws on licence to kill and capture of wild elephants in certain circumstances, segregation and medical treatment of lepers, regulating the grant of titles to qualified persons in western medical science and prohibition of pledging of labour of children (child slavery) are among those abolished.